


Venus in Aries

by Psythe



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Godstuck, Aspect Philosophy, Breast Fucking, Cum Swallowing, F/F, Hermaphroditic Trolls, Mildly Dubious Consent, Multi, Oral Sex, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, Religious Themes, Rough Sex, Sexual Exhaustion, Sexual Worship, Telekinesis, Tentabulges, Threesome - F/F/F, Xeno, excessive cum, possibly? depends on your perspective, psionic play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-16 09:50:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14809019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Psythe/pseuds/Psythe
Summary: In an alternate universe, the trolls succeeded in their session and became the gods of Earth. In this timeline, Rose and Jade are both priestesses of Aradia, the Daughter of Death.It is a decidedly nonvirginal practice.





	Venus in Aries

**Author's Note:**

  * For [someone_else](https://archiveofourown.org/users/someone_else/gifts).



> Second fill/treat from Polyswap Derse 2017! Prompt:
> 
> "in an alternate universe where the trolls succeeded in their session and became the gods of Earth, Rose and Jade both worship the same goddess, Aradia; It is a decidedly nonvirginal practice. Could be that Aradia visits them or her temple in person or in disguise or could be Aradia pov as she watches them worship from on high as they fuck at the foot of her statue. Some other cools things are: the imagery of her horns, Allusions to the other trolls and their followers, the girls realizing they love eachother as much and yet totally differently than they love Aradia, explicit acknowledgment of the power differential, oral sex. Basically, I am already 100% in love with anything you can think of on the theme of sexual worship!"

 

_Time passed hard,_

_and the task was the hardest thing she'd ever do,_

_but she forgot_

_[the moment she saw you.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHAHgjL0YzQ) _

 

 Boy, you think to yourself, there are a _lot_ of people here right now!

You’re not _actually_ complaining, of course; you can never object to a holy place of your beloved Daughter being well-patronized, or to you and Rose’s ministry apparently being popular enough that this many people would come to talk to you rather than to any of the other temples or to the Zodiac Shrine at the center of town. It’s very flattering! And the reality is that there’s not even really that many people here - there’s only, like, fourteen or fifteen or so. (That still kind of seems like a lot of people to you, but logically you know it’s not that big a group. Your vestibule can hold at least twice as many people as that.)

No, the problem, really, is that there are a lot of people here considering that the shrine closes to the public in fifteen minutes. That’s only an average of one minute per person, which is nowhere _near_ enough time to give proper respect to someone’s spiritual concerns, and, you know, well, if you need to come talk to a cleric, you need to come talk to a cleric, but … it was clearly posted both out front _and_ on the shrine website what time you were closing, and it just really kind of feels to you like people who are seeking the divine guidance of the goddess of time should at least be polite enough to know what time it is!

(You also kind of do not want to sit around dealing with stragglers after you were supposed to have closed, because this is a holy day, specifically the holy day on which your Daughter hosts the goddess of love, and as the stars come out tonight it is _very important_ that you and Rose perform the proper rites in honor of this occasion, and you do not want to be late, partly because it would be dishonorable but mostly because it is going to be _really really fun._ )

“Okay, look,” you say, taking a deep breath and re-applying your smile. “What color _are_ your candles?”  
  
“Just, like, tan?” the nervous-looking woman in front of you says, about six whole minutes after this conversation should have been over.

You resist the urge to roll your eyes. It wouldn’t be polite, and anyway she wouldn’t be here if she really genuinely didn’t know! “Okay,” you say, “that’s totally fine! They don’t actually _have_ to be any color-”

“But he said they had to be red.” It’s like this lady thinks _she_ is the priestess of the faith whose festival you are about to celebrate.  
  
“No, they don’t have to be red, and actually, they don’t even have to be candles at all, they can be torches, or a bonfire, or whatever! As long as you’re lighting an uncovered flame!”

 “...really?” The woman blinks. She actually looks a little suspicious. Does she think you’re lying to her?

 “Yep!” you smile brightly in response. “The flame is a symbol of entropy, so it’s a symbol of Time. That’s the only part that actually matters. You can look it up, it’s in Part II.” You tap your copy of the _Climb Through Darkness_. You swear, nobody actually reads the book. “What you _shouldn’t_ do is light _blue_ candles - that’s very dishonorable and offensive, and _I_ don’t really think this is a huge deal but Sister Lalonde would be mad if I didn’t mention it, so you shouldn’t light fuschia candles either during any rite to honor the Daughter. Symbols of Life are - never mind, your minute’s up!” You stop yourself before you can get into an even more long-winded explanation of high-level metaphysics that these people don’t care about and you’d probably screw up talking about without Rose here anyway. “Go on, head home and get ready! It’ll be dark soon!” You shoo the woman out. “And don’t take ritual advice from random people!” you call out. “They probably just want to sell you something!”  
  
“Okay, what’s your problem?” you point at another person in the gaggle of petitioners, probably sounding a little more rude than you intended.

“Um, well, I came to borrow some books?” It’s a young girl, younger than you. “I made the reservations online…”

“Sister Lalonde runs the public book exchange, she’s not here right now. You,” you point at the next guy, “what’s your-”  
  
“But - aren’t you closing up in a few minutes?” the girl asks, looking deeply concerned.  
  
This is not a huge deal, you think to yourself. She can just come back and get her books tomorrow. “Yes, and I have a lot of people to get to before then, so-”  
  
“Where’s Sister Lalonde?” someone calls.

“Out,” you say, and turn back to the nervous teenage girl. “The rite is really soon, why don’t you just go home and celebrate it?”  
  
She looks downcast. “I … don’t have anyone to do it with.”

“Well just go to the Huntress’s shrine! Or a bar! You’ll find someone!” You are getting very exasperated!  
  
She blushes furiously and looks down at her feet. “Um… I don’t…”  
  
Oh, god. Oh, geez. You think you may have screwed up.

You need to not make assumptions about these things. Not everyone likes fun fast sex. You are getting really impatient and annoyed and it is not fair to your petitioners. You expend considerable effort not scowling and pulling your own hair at what a fuckup you are. You really wish Rose was here, but Rose is at the store getting food, because you are both terrible at keeping the fridge filled and reminders are not actually useful if you don’t remember to put them on, and now it is almost the love host and all you have in the kitchen is a jar of pickles and some water enhancer.

“Hey, hey,” you say, gently holding up your hands. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry. Hey, it’s okay. Listen, don’t worry about it. It’s just about enjoying your life! That’s what all of the rites of the Daughter are about, okay? So just dedicate tonight to enjoying yourself. What’s your favorite thing to do?”

The girl mumbles, “Read books at home.”  
  
“Oh,” you say.  
  
You are very embarrassed. You tell her to wait in the back and you will work this out.

Next person. A guy who wants to know if you or Rose can cast a _…. birth control spell_ , so he can celebrate the host without a condom or anything else. You tell him no, and have a brief internal debate over whether or not to tell Rose about the idea, because she would probably start actually researching it. (This would _probably_ be a waste of time. Rose is _absolutely_ convinced that metaphysics research is eventually going to lead to real practicable practical magic. You have not _actually_ seen any proof to the contrary, but you remain skeptical. But you _also_ think that it is very adorable how excited she gets about it, especially when she is trying very hard not to look exc - okay, getting distracted, back to work, Harley!) Next person. A fellow of indeterminate gender who needs partners for the love host and wants to know if you can set them up with one. You say no. Next person. A guy who needs partners for the love host and wants to know if he can _join you and Rose._ _Definitely_ not. You scowl, mildly. “What’s your name?” you ask him. You don’t actually know it, which you feel a little bad about, but also this guy sucks and you don’t particularly want to know him.

“Ethan!” he says.

You raise your eyebrows expectantly. “Ethan…”  
  
“Oh! Ethan Dios.”  
  
“Okay.” You write his name down on a sheet of paper on your podium and then move a reminder from your pointer to your ring finger to make extra-double-sure you don’t forget. You raise your voice. “How many people are here because they don’t have a date for tonight?”

Two hands go up. Ethan’s is one of them. “Not you!” You snap. He lowers his hand slowly. You clearly imagine a scolded dog drooping its ears and feel no remorse at all. Three more hands go up. “Okay, people!” You put on your best displeased face! “This is a temple of death and knowledge, it is not a dating site!!! You four, either hook up or get out of here! Ethan, _you_ are banned from the love host for being way too forward and frankly kind of gross.”

His face falls. He looks genuinely distressed. This poor asshole has no idea he was being creepy. Whatever. You will educate him later when you are not late for a divinely ordained booty call with an extremely cute priestess. “You heard me!!!” you bark. “I am allowed to do that within my jurisdiction, as long as my Sister doesn’t veto, and I am pretty sure that is not going to happen!” You open your book and point emphatically at the page. It is definitely not the page that contains the decretum you are talking about, but this guy doesn’t know that, and you know the rule is in there, so it’s totally not a lie. “Now get out of here and go home and think about what you’ve done, or Sister Lalonde will _definitely_ put a curse on you when she gets back!” He slinks out of the vestibule. You hope he’s ashamed of himself.

You glance down at the book, curious what you were actually pointing at. Looks like it’s a page from the Journey, a piece about the Daughter and the Architect suffering under Death’s oppression together. It’s very powerful and moving. Rose thinks it is also very romantic, because Rose is a huge weirdo. This is not a decretum at all, let alone one about banishing someone from a rite. You close the book before you do anything else dumb and embarrass yourself in the eyes of your goddess any more than you already have.

You are definitely not going to get through everyone now, even after taking care of the four people who were just here looking for dates all at once. (Though you can see them all talking in the entranceway now, so maybe they’ll actually get something out of this, that would be good.) You’ll take one more and then make an excuse. People can’t object if you have to go get ready for this very important rite, you are a priestess and that is literally your job. You do an eeny meeny miny moe with your eyes and then point at someone. You know this guy, you’ve seen him around town. Darn it, what’s his name?  
  
He steps forward. “Hello, Sister - Harley?” You nod encouragingly. “Well, uh, my heart just moved here from out west, and they don’t do the love host there, and she’s really confused? I think she thinks it means having sex in a graveyard or something.” You giggle. There’s a ripple of laughter from the room.

“I mean, I don’t think our Daughter would _object_ to having sex in a graveyard.” you say, thinking, and being careful not to say anything that would reveal that you don’t know his name. God damn it, you are going to remember this guy’s name if it _kills_ you. “But it’s nothing like that. The point of the love host is just to celebrate life! Death is just the end of life. The Daughter had life taken away from Her, and She wants us to enjoy ours as much as possible! Which I think is very selfless of Her. And the official position of our sect - which is officially recognized by the Concordance, we have the paperwork in the back - is that that means that physical love is an act of worship, because there is basically nothing more fun in the whole world.”  
  
“Yes,” you hear a familiar voice suddenly from the back of the crowd. Your face lights up as everyone turns to look at Rose.

She is not wearing her robes, just a jacket over a lavender sundress that you think makes her look beautiful (She basically looks beautiful in everything, but still) with a red ram-horn pin at her breast to signify her allegiance. She quirks her lovely black lips into a smile in a way that you find very distracting and looks at the guy in that way that makes you feel like her eyes are boring a hole through you.

“Having sex in a graveyard,” she says, addressing the whole room, “would be a union of life and death, which I can tell you with authority is something our Daughter of Death would be very enthused about. If I wanted to, I could make this a local religious mandate to have sex in graveyards.” Everyone laughs again. “But, then, I guess everyone would be doing it, and if I were to be responsible even in some small way for creating a world in which having sex in a graveyard isn’t considered special, the Daughter would never forgive me, and of course I would never forgive myself.”  
  
Rose is always like this. She talks in front of people so easily, she’s brilliant at sermons and speaking events, she always says exactly what she means, she can make anyone laugh or listen. And she acts like she’s more than just an interpreter of your goddess’s will -  like she has a direct line to Her, like she calls Her up regularly on the phone and has long, in-depth conversations about the spiritual truths of the world. In her mind, it seems like the goddess of death and time is a personal acquaintance who has personal opinions about her performance as an adherent. She acts like if she ever makes a mistake, the Daughter of Death Herself will be waiting for her in her dreams or around the next corner, disapproving, disdainful, or even angry.

(You don’t think that’s what the Daughter of Death is like at all. But you know that to some extent, the gods are what they mean to people.)

You think that just maybe it is a _tiny_ bit presumptuous of her to think these things. But you also admire her faith.

She’s still standing back so that everyone can see her, rather than moving in to talk to the guy whose question she’s supposedly answering. “Specifically, though,” she’s saying, “the purpose of the love host is just that - to celebrate your love. We _recommend_ that you perform the horizontal tango to celebrate, but - well, as She Herself said:

 _‘Your duty, if you wish to honor and gladden the Daughter of Death, is to take_ pleasure _in the duration of your existence, to enjoy life, to revel in this world that She has helped give to you, that you seek out and enjoy all of its wonders. That you love yourself, that you give love of every kind to yourself and those around you.’_ ”

As always, her recitation is perfect. “So, just do something romantic with your matesprit, and you’re fine.”

 You grin at him. “Does that help at all?”

 “...uh, it might.” He smiles a little unsteadily. Garcian! That’s his name. “Uh, mate … spirit?”

 Rose’s smile widens knowingly. “That’s the proper term.”

 “Well, the rite starts really really soon, Garcian,” you say, before Rose can keep you all here for the next half an hour talking about Originalism, “so you should probably get going and start convincing your heart now! In fact, everybody out, we’re closed for the night!” You start shooing the petitioners towards the door. Rose looks on, amused, and just stands there for a moment, leaving you to deal with their protests, until some of them start looking to her for a second opinion. She just smiles and nods in the direction of the exit.  
  
Eventually you manage to drive them all out and close the doors. “You’re late!” you say to Rose.

She scowls in a penitent kind of way. “I know, I know. There was a little last-minute traffic.”

“It’s okay.” You pat her on the arm. “It gave me more time to get to some of these people.”

“Any good ones?”

You make a face. “Nnnnnot really. Pretty much just the one you came in on. Oh!! And someone came looking for the library,” your stomach does a guilty little twitch, “I told her to wait, I don’t know your filing system.”

She makes a little noise in her throat that isn’t quite a sigh but still manages to thoroughly communicate how exasperated she is. “You should let me teach you.” She strides across the vestibule, her sneakers padding on the stone. “Educating the community is everyone’s business.”  
  
“Then give sermons! About stuff other than the _Climb_! Teach classes out of the shrine! Run a book club! A holy book club!”

Rose’s mouth twists into a very cute frown that you know means she’s interested, but she’s going to mess with you a little. (You have a very good working knowledge of Rose’s facial expressions. You spend a lot of time thinking about Rose’s face.) “That would be an abuse of our position.” she says. “But it’s an interesting idea. A sacred book club, its reading list consecrated in the name of the Daughter of Death, where attendees must actually _read_ the books selected or She will not smile on their souls when they pass!”

“ _Rose!_ You can’t do that!”

“Oh, relax, I wouldn’t actually do it.”  
  
“You _can’t_ do it! You can’t cut someone off from death, and if you could you definitely wouldn’t be allowed to do it for them not reading a book.”

“The person I walked in on thought the love host is ‘having sex in a graveyard.’ What other Spiritual Concerns did you get today? Anyone looking for you to teach them to read an analog clock?”  
  
“That person actually needed help, Rose.”

“Seriously, what was the most inane question you got tonight?”

“They aren’t inane, Rose. They’re real questions to the people who ask them.”

“They can be authentic spiritual concerns that people genuinely need guidance on and still be inane. What was it?”  
  
You sigh, shooting the air out of one side of your mouth through puckered lips. “Some spider was trying to sell people fancy expensive red candles and telling them you have to have red candles for the love host. So she was asking what color candles she needed.”

Rose’s expression is cool at this. “We’ll have to have a talk with this spider after the celebration.”

You nod. “Yeah.” You pass through the arch at the back of the vestibule. Both of you throw the horns as you walk between the carvings of the Daughter. “And also there was someone asking if different kinks were, like, more favored than others.”

Rose actually bursts out with a snort of laughter at this. This conversation is pretty stupid, but you really like it when she laughs - laughs for real, not the little fake laughs she uses when she thinks she’s supposed to find something funny or when she wants to pretend she’s laughing with somebody. “As in, would doing it doggy style as opposed to missionary earn them more favor in the afterlife?”

You nod, a grin pulling at your own lips. “Uh-huh.”

“The afterlife that doesn’t _exist._ ”

“That’s debatable.”

“No it’s not. And you’ve proven my point. Anyone who actually believes that I could enforce some sort of excommunication from the embrace of our Daughter is in dire enough need of education that it’d be for their own good to scare them a little bit. I will face the Choir with a clear consc - oh!” Rose blinks as you step into the antechamber. The girl looks up at you. Rose smiles. “Ah, yes. You’re here for books? We’re short on time, what’s your name?”

“Oh. Um. Canaia. Tolen.”  
  
Rose’s smile widens. “That’s an auspicious name. I take it you know that, though.” She nods, shyly. “I’ll look you up.” She sweeps over to the little votive in the wall, where a computer is tucked in between carvings of the Opposing Force and the Architect. (It’s good luck to have Them blessing your electronics, and of course it’s also respectful to have your Daughter’s lover and companion present in the shrine.) “Sorry if you overheard our vigorous little debate there. Regular dialectic on matters theological is an important part of a priestess’s responsibilities.”

You roll your eyes a little bit but nod pleasantly. You don’t really want a layperson getting too worked up over the whole afterlife question, not until the Concordance actually finally comes to an official resolution on the matter, which will probably happen around when your kids are forty. The girl, Canaia, blushes again. “No, no, it’s - it’s okay. I just want my books.”

She’s looking at you kind of weird. You smile. You really hope she’s not too upset at you for earlier. Maybe you should say something? No, not in front of Rose. If she reserved books online Rose must have her contact information. You’ll send her an email or something later. You make what you definitely intend to be an inviting face (you’re pretty sure it _is_ an inviting face, but you can never be sure how someone will take something). “Do you need anything else? I’m sorry it was so hectic before.”

She looks horribly anxious for a moment (you feel really bad for her, she must have a really hard time coming out here like this) and then asks, “...do you, like … I mean, do you get questions that dumb all the time?”

You want to scream. Someone _understands._

“Sometimes,” you say, not wanting to be uncharitable to your petitioners.

“Constantly, actually.” Rose says. “Don’t let my colleague’s clemency attribute, a characteristic that is only surpassed by - well, actually, no, nothing can actually match up to Sister Harley’s compassion, not even her loveliness, which is _also_ considerable. Anyway, don’t let it fool you, she can’t help it. We get a _lot_ of stupid questions.”

Wow! Okay! Rose is definitely for sure flirting with you in front of this girl. You do not mind being flirted with by Rose. Flirting with Rose is an excellent use of your time. But this is maybe a little weird. It’s probably okay. Right? You look at Canaia. Her cheeks are bright red and she looks really uncomfortable.

“Are you devout?” you ask, trying to break some of the tension. You would jump in front of a bullet for Rose, and you two go very well together, but sometimes she is not good at picking up these normal people things. She has a bad habit of forgetting that everyone isn’t like her or you or Dave, that not everyone likes talking about every little thing or know how to handle themselves when people start pushing boundaries. “Have you read the _Climb_ ?” She knew that the questions were dumb, so you’re assuming the answer is yes.  
  
She nods, nervously. “Y-yes. Um. I … yeah, I, um… I love history. I don’t, think about death. Very often.”

“Well, you know what they say about history, not learning from it, so on, so forth.” Rose is looking at the computer screen. “The adage is pretty amusing devoid of its original concept, though. I don’t think most people understand that it was meant literally. Our Daughter did plenty of-”

“Rose!!” You finally burst out. “The rite starts in like fifteen minutes and we are late and this girl needs her books so go get them!!!”  
  
Rose blinks. She looks genuinely surprised. You know she honestly didn’t realize. She clears her throat. “Yes. Right. Sorry.” She ducks through the doorway into the archive. Sometimes she needs a little push. 

Canaia is shaking very slightly. “Hey.” you say. “You don’t have to think about death a lot. If you care about the past, and understand it, and venerate it, that’s more than enough for the Daughter of Death.”

She swallows.

“ _Have_ you read the _Climb_?”

She gives a shaky nod.

“What did you think of it?”

“...it’s a beautiful story.”

“Sister Lalonde thinks so too. And the point of it is that you shouldn’t care about death too much. Death is a gift the Daughter gave us, but so is Time. And you shouldn’t waste your Time doing anything but enjoying your Life. Understand?”

She nods again, a little more steady, and you think she does.

 

* * *

 

Rose comes back with the girl’s books, making knowledgeable little comments about each one as she hands them over. Rose knows each and every book in the library, and never allows any new arrivals to be checked out until she has read them herself. You know that’s the real reason Rose is here, with you under the Daughter. She told you once (when you were both _quite_ tipsy) that an oracle told her that in order to find her true destiny she should serve the Spider, but Rose needs books and words the way other people need food and water, without them she would shrivel up and die, like a plant without sunlight or soil. So she came here, to your Daughter who remembers everything, and asks only that Her followers remember all that they can.

She sends Canaia on her way, saying aloud as you go upstairs to the kitchen that she wishes the two of you had more followers with such excellent taste in literature. “I’m serious about the book club.” you reply. “If you think they’re so dumb, you should teach them!”

Rose nods, thoughtfully, as she decaptchalogues the groceries. “Maybe.”  
  
You turn to look at her full-on, putting your hands on your hips. “Is that a real ‘you’re going to think about it’ maybe, or are you just trying to get me to shut up?”

Rose sighs exasperatedly, but her face when she looks at you is only a little bit sardonic. “A real one.” You raise your eyebrows at her demonstratively! “Honest!” She smiles - not poised and tart and superior like usual, with her beautiful sculpted lips pursed as though she finds everything around her amusing (but only mildly so); instead not exactly narrow but not exactly wide either, a tiny bit uneven with her eyes crinkling and tugging at her mountain of freckles, sheepish, apologetic - a real smile, to go along with her real laugh from earlier, and your extremely moderate (but sincere!) indignation melts away.

“‘Like fifteen minutes’?” she breaks the moment, a smirk creeping back onto her face. “That doesn’t sound very priestessly.”

“The rite!” You freak out a little. “Oh, fuck, we have to get changed!!!” You scurry off to your chambers. Rose chuckles and follows you, shutting the fridge behind her.

 

* * *

 

 _“Clothing_ _that accentuates the physical features,”_ your mistress had said, in a sermon, _“increases anticipation. The purpose of the love host is to celebrate physical love as one of the most enjoyable and pleasurable acts humans can engage in, and as pleasure - enjoyment -_ fun _\- is the goal, anything that makes the act more enjoyable is an inherent good. An outfit that draws your eyes to their best features - makes you consider more carefully their shape: their collarbone, their musculature and tendons, their breasts, their behind and hips, their legs and arms - is a holy object. It makes you imagine them as you prepare, makes you build a picture of their most private, sacred nakedness in your mind’s eye, that you may venerate the Void (for while we are here to contemplate Death, we must honor and acknowledge all the gods) by creating them not as they are but as they will be in the near future, a conceptual that you will desire and hunger for. When you have been with your partners before, and you already know what they look like without clothes, the experience is transformed, but not to unrecognizability. Now it is a contemplation of entropy, of the inescapable effect of holy Time upon what all of us remember, degrading our recollection atom by atom, neuron by neuron, all - Space, Life, Mind, and Heart - dissolving into the infinite dark, eternally, forever. And so the facsimile you conjure in the Void of your imagination - and a facsimile it always is, for no one’s memory is truly perfect - of your fellow celebrant’s naked body, of the feel of their skin against yours, of the taste of their sweat, the sound of their voice crying out as you bring them over the top, it will always be imperfect, always an evolution, a new experience each time as you imagine, different perhaps only by the smallest of degrees, but eternally so. And fueled by these sacred mysteries, your arousal will burn all the hotter, tension that will build in the sexual core of your being until it is overwhelming, until it boils within you for release and turns you in upon yourself and drives you to desperation._

_And when at last you finish your supplication, and fall upon your fellow celebrants, the force of your manumission will be incomparable.”_

Looking back, you are like 99% sure that your mistress had a thing for orgasm denial.

But she taught you so much, expanded your mind and awakened you to the real truths that can be found in the dry, sometimes difficult to follow text of the _Climb Though Darkness_ , and also she could make you come just by _talking_.

Plus, she was right!

You dress for the ceremony. It always gets you a tiny bit excited. Maybe more than a tiny bit. In accordance with doctrine, for a celebration of physical love your long, demure red robes and hood are exchanged for a snug, form-fitting red raiment with no leggings. Rose looks _amazing_ in hers. You know she thinks you look even better, but you can’t imagine how that’s possible, the way the ritual garb emphasizes her generous hips and soft, curvy butt and hugs her amazing round boobs. Not that you think you look bad or anything! But you’re so… _stringy_ , thin and wiry, Rose would say you’re _sinewy_ , there’s so little for the outfit to show off, whereas her body is lush and voluptuous and soft in all the right places...

You look at her appreciatively as you step out of your respective chambers, candles in hand. She’s returning the favor, a blush creeping into her cheeks, and you wonder what exactly it is she sees, what about you could already be getting her so excited. Is it your body she’s staring at, you wonder? Or just the recollection of what it will actually be like once you begin, once your tongue is inside her and your mouth is on her clit? Does what you look like matter, or is it what you do that counts?

She lights her candle, and touches it to yours. The motion is very deliberate, and she is staring you in the face when she does it, her eyes burning, the smile half melted off of her face by what you know is barely-restrained want. You smile back, biting your lip with excitement. You want to kiss her, a _lot_ , but it would it would be extremely inappropriate for either of you to make physical contact with the other now, before the rite has truly begun, no matter how badly you both want to touch one another (which, of course, is the point). “Is it time yet?” you say, unable to control your anticipation.

“Shouldn’t you know?” Rose smirks at you again.

“Stop it!” you say, bristling. “I _really really_ want to kiss you right now and I am not allowed to yet, so let’s get on with this!”  
  
“The feeling is mutual,” Rose says, and takes the first step forward as she begins the rite.  
  
“Daughter of Death,” she intones, staring ahead down the corridor as you begin to walk with slow, purposeful steps, “Goddess of Time, Rememberer of things forgotten, Transfigured One, Ram-horned, explorer goddess, navigator of death, handmaid of the realm beyond life, you who climbed out of darkness and took the throne of your _lusus_ , that which you had earned by passing the threshold of death twice, on this night we honor your wishes.”

The air fills with the pungent smell of incense from the candles. You make your way on into the shrine, unhurriedly, one foot in front of the other, as no one in life should ever rush headlong towards death. (In this specific rite you are not so sure about that one, because no you shouldn’t really want to die but you think that it is definitely okay to want to have sloppy makeouts with an extremely cute and hot person as fast as possible, but hey, the rules are the rules!) “In your holy writ you said to us,” Rose is saying, her diction flawless, the t’s and k’s _clicking_ out of her mouth like she’s snapping them off with her teeth, “‘ _One day, you will die.’_ ”

“‘ _This_ ,” she says, and you say it along with her in unison as you step out into the shrine, “ _is inescapable_ , _as simple and expected as the beating of your blood-pusher or the expanding and collapsing of your vascular system._ ” The terminology is strange, even though you’re used to it. Rose is an originalist; she treasures her personally translated copies of the original _Climb_ , with all their strange terms and seemingly awkward phrases, and even if the rest of the time you’re able to convince her to use the normal terms for the sake of the person on the street, in your own ceremonies she refuses to use anything other than what she insists are the Daughter of Death’s own words. “ _It is natural, like the turning of the seasons or the rising and setting of the moons on the horizon, not something to be feared. It is the end of life. It is the conclusion of your existence.’_ ”

Together, you look up at the sky. The sun has set and the stars are coming out. You can see the moon - only one moon, despite the original translation of ‘moons’, a mystery that priests like Rose are still trying to figure out. Your timing is perfect, of course, for all your fretting. Rose would never let your count slip. The starlight shines down into your shrine, gleaming off the tall statue of the Daughter of Death, with her long robes and her curly horns, her wings forming the back of the alcove she stands in. You both throw the horns solemnly up at her beaming face. You can see the constellations clearly, the gentle curve of your Daughter’s ram, laid over the bright red orb that signifies the home of the Huntress, goddess of love, as She hosts Her colleague and friend in honor of the love and fulfillment and sexual happiness they both wish for Their mortal children.

“ _It is a release,_ ” you say, as you walk around the perimeter of the shrine, lighting all the candles on the walls and floor, filling the room with that wonderful smell that you now associate inextricably with sex, _“from the suffering of old age, or freedom from a life that has walked too long in my moirail’s keeping._ ” You pause for a moment, to honor the Architect of Fate and give you both a moment to contemplate His sacrifices, and the love that He and your Daughter bear for one another. He takes care of those who live in misery and pain, but sometimes even He can’t help them anymore, so He passes them on to your Daughter His moirail, who relieves them of their hardship.

“ _Your duty,_ ” you’re carrying on as you come up behind her, your job done, “ _if you wish to honor and gladden the Daughter of Death, is to treat the conclusion of your existences with dignity and reason, to understand it as the ordinary and expected event that it is, to not cause yourself needless fear and anguish by dreading death,_ ” You’re still reciting, but you’re also looking at her butt. Your eyes drink in the flare of her thighs, the twin rectangles of pale, curvy flesh revealed by her ceremonial garb. You slide your arms around her waist, leaning your head forward to place a kiss on the side of her neck.

There’s only the slightest hitch in her breath as your lips make contact. “ _To lead others to do the same,_ ” Your hands travel up along the soft material of her robes as you whisper the words of the rite along with her. “ _And that you take_ pleasure,” your fingers climb up onto her breasts, “ _in the duration of your existence,_ ” you squeeze, “ _that you enjoy life,_ ” through the thin fabric of the raiment you can feel her nipples, and you get those points in between your middle and ring fingers and squeeze again, and this time Rose’s voice catches and climbs a couple of notes, “ _that you revel in this world that I have helped give to you, that you seek out and enjoy all of its wonders,_ ” Rose is still reciting, unfaltering as you keep working her over, but her legs are starting to feel shaky and she’s sagging against you a little bit. Death and _Fate_ you’re wet, “ _That you love yourself, that you give love of every kind to yourself and those around you.’”_ _  
__  
_ You lower her down onto the deep red carpet as you finish the dictum, and without any further ceremony you climb on top of her. You press your lips against hers, muffling the next line of the dictum, and your glasses fall off your nose. She laughs and reaches up, pulling them gently off of your face. You’re blushing. You always forget to take them off. Rose just does that to you, you can’t restrain yourself around her.

Exactly what you and Rose are to one another, you don’t know. You don’t think she does either. You know that you like her a _lot_ , that she’s funny and smart and cares so much that even she doesn’t realize it. You know that you are both devoted to the Daughter of Death in the same way. You know that separate from anything else, the two of you are _incredible_ together when the clothes come off; even if you didn’t actually like her (which of course is ridiculous and silly, because Rose is the best) you would _always_ want to have sex with her. Some people are just … hot together, you’ve found. At the seminary your mistress said that you had ‘compatible energy’. Your mistress was kind of a weirdo, but she was also right about basically everything, and you’re _pretty_ sure those things aren’t a coincidence, and really if you think about it that is probably why you are a priestess and not something else.  
  
You descend again, and this time it’s soft and wet and _perfect_ , she kisses back eagerly as you push your tongue into her mouth. The air is full of the smell of incense now, and you draw in great lungfuls of it and the smell of Rose with each breath. Your hands grasp at the soft carpet as Rose’s arms encircle you and rest on either side of your waist, and then trek lower to settle on your butt. She pulls you up further onto her as her fingers slowly caress and grasp at your firm flesh and muscle. You groan into her mouth and reach up into her soft hair, running your fingers through it for a moment before you ease her headband out of her hair and drop it to the floor. Her hair fans out onto the carpeting. Your panties are _soaked_.

It’s entirely possible that you would just keep going like this until you are both naked and then carry on like that for the rest of the night, which is why Rose is senior sister and not you. She turns her head away from your lips at last. You whine very briefly, but then she begins the next stage of the recitation and you come to attention.

 _“We are yours, o Daughter of Death,_ ” she says, and you say it with her even as you move downwards across her body, “ _we have dedicated our Minds to memory and remembrance, and we have dedicated our bodies to each other’s pleasure._ ” Your hands are on her hips now, and as always you’re really amazed by her public speaking training, as she manages to suck in shaky breaths and continue her recitation while you work your fingers in under the bands of her high-cuts and start to probe at her buttocks and in towards her privates, pleased to learn that she’s just as wet as you are. “ _For if love is the greatest repayment we can offer,_ ” you tug the underwear down her legs, “ _for the gifts that you have given to us, and to all humankind,_ ” you slide your hands up her lovely plush thighs and cup handfuls of her beautiful soft butt, “ _then on behalf of all humankind your brood, here, on this night,_ ” you straighten up a bit and look across at her face, “ _we offer our pleasure to you as you sit in the hall of the Huntress, She who watches over lovers, that it might gladden you._ ” Rose is lying down flat, her face pointed directly up at the stars, where your goddess looks down on your works with both her stone and celestial faces, her face flushed, her eyes closed in rapture even as her lips move in the words of the rite.

“Look down on us, Daughter of Death!” she calls out, and you brush the hem of her tabard aside and settle yourself in between her legs. “Look upon our love! Our lust! Our release! Our joy!” You smile into her wet slit, your eyes shut as you start to run your tongue up and down from the top of it to the bottom, up and down, slowly at first but gradually quicker and quicker. Rose spreads her legs for you as you go and for the first time she actually stumbles in her recital as your tongue slips in between her lower lips. “Watch - watch us l-live! W-watch us love life! And know… know …and … and know… that our luh-love for one another is only surpassed by our love for You, o ram-horned Daughter of Time!””

She cries this last up at the statue, up at the stars, and then comes completely undone for a while. You don’t know how long. All you know is the wet warmth of her, her thighs intermittently squeezing your head as you press yourself into her, and you fall into a trance, your whole world reduced to the sound of Rose’s moans and delicious little gasps, the motion of licking up and down, up and down, down to the bottom of her opening and then up to its very top, _just_ below her clit, you go up until you can feel the barest edge of it with your tongue and feel Rose tense up around you in response - and then back down again, and she groans with frustration and desire, a little bit louder each incidence.

And so you contemplate the third of your sect’s miracles; through pleasure, you subsume yourself into the universe, and you transcend time.

Rose tangles her fingers in your hair and tugs (a little too hard, but you don’t mind). You follow her, rising from your sacred reverie, and both your hands fall to the sash at her waist and fling it aside, and she starts to recite again as you unwrap her like a present. You think you lick your lips at the sight of her large, soft breasts falling free, swollen and rosy (hee hee).  
  
You kiss her again, and then her chin, and then the little seam where her jaw meets her throat, and down, and down. “We offer you no vittles,” Rose finally manages to get out, now that she has a moment to breathe, “we offer you no treasure or precious things,” you place a kiss on the top of her left breast, you bring your hands up to encircle and lift them from the bottom, and Rose moans again, lustily, she’s so _loud_ when you fuck, you love that about her, god, she smells good, “for - OH! oh, fuck- for what wealth or food has - mmhn! - any meaning in your realm?” You enclose her big, beautiful boobs in your hands as best you can, massaging and stroking while pressing hot kisses to her skin, and then you take her nipples between your fingers and _squeeze._

Rose _screams._ “ _No!!_ ” She shrieks up at the heavens, “No, our Daughter, who birthed everything that we know, who set Time in motion,” you squeeze again and she cries out, “and gave meaning to our existence! _Ah!!!_ Our _love_ is our sacrifice! Mmhm! Ah! Fuck-” You grin, and pull back from a moment to look at her, still working her nipples. Her chest is heaving under your hands, her pale skin is shining in the starlight, with the light of the Huntress’s hall, the light of the love host. You can see every single freckle on her face and throat. You bet you could count them if you had time. Maybe you do. Maybe you have all the Time in the world. You think that the Daughter of Death is with you here in the shrine tonight.

“We burn our offerings in the fire our lovers stoke in our bodies,” Rose is saying, and it’s time for the finale. You have to get this just right. (It’s okay if you don’t, of course, sex is sex and it’s different every time, but you and Rose are simply the best there is, and you take pride in your precision in the bedroom as well as on the firing range.) “Witness it,” she gasps, and you clamp your lips over her right nipple.

“ _Witness it!”_ Rose howls, you’re sure they can hear her in every house on the next block (they’re supposed to be able to hear her in the stars) and you purse your lips and suck, “and know, that we do not waste your gift,” you bury your face in her breasts, “ _Witness it, Daughter,_ ” Rose cries, her arms and legs wrapping tight around you, voice finally cracking and her whole body shaking with holy exultation, “ _Witness it! Witness it! Witness it!!”_

And on that last chant you take her hard, swollen little bud between your teeth and give her other nipple one last, fierce little twist between your fingers, and Rose stiffens against you, gasping and screaming hoarsely, and her voice as she comes is the most beautiful thing you’ve ever heard. It’s the music of the spheres, the sound that the Choir must make when your Daughter opens its gate to admit you. Music is very important in the Twelve, music is how the gods accessed the higher powers of reality, and the Twelve tell you that when They raised Their voices together as one, the cosmos _shook_ with the majesty of Their song. And in your mind, that sound that Rose makes as she finally tips over the edge is what that must have sounded like, the deafening, miraculous noise that filled all of Space when the Daughter of Death set the multiverse in motion. You swear you can hear it in your ears along with her final scream, a beautiful ringing chime that echoes around the shrine, you see red fireworks exploding in the corners of your vision.

Rose gasps for breath, lying there naked in a puddle of red fabric on the floor, glowing. You smile at her, enjoying the friction between your legs as you shift on top of her. She smiles blearily back up at you, slowly untangling her hands from where they had grabbed huge knots of your hair, and places them on the sides of your face.  
  
You move to adjust yourself, so that you can be touching as much of her as possible while she recovers, and in the process your head turns up towards the statue, and that’s when you see Her sitting on the altar.  
  
It takes you a moment to react. You realize later that it’s because She actually looks _too much like Herself_ , you were expecting it to be kind of abstracted somehow, you didn’t think that She could actually look _exactly_ like the statues and images from the really, really old temples. You’ve never actually been to the Holy Land, of course, but Grandpa has, lots of times, and you’ve seen pictures of the places.

And there She is, in the flesh - not human flesh, no, you could never mistake it for that; Her skin is grey, the proportions are all wrong, Her horns, just like the ones on the stone version of Her own head that looms over Her, are unequivocally, undoubtedly real (though the details on the statue are not quite right - Hers curve outwards farther horizontally), surrounded by a circle of ash and shining red dust still floating in the air around Her from her entrance into your world.

She’s dressed in red, just like you. Her wings are wide and beautiful, the illustrations and stone imitations could never have prepared you, they sparkle with energy and vigor, a few particles of red dust falling onto the altar each time they move and twitch. But what’s really breathtaking about Her are Her eyes, black and red on yellow, and _absolutely_ focused on the two of you, wide and excited and _ravenous_ , so curious and interested She might as well be starving as She smiles at you, terrifyingly wide.

It’s exactly the way Rose looks when she gets a new mystery to obsess over, only even more so, and in that moment you fall helplessly, utterly in love with Her.

“Wh-who are you?” Rose asks, hesitantly, and you swivel your head to look at her, astonished - does she not know? Does she not feel it? All she has to do is look at the statue!

“Isn’t it obvious?” She says. “This is _my_ temple,” She looks around at the shrine, Her huge yellow eyes absorbing every detail. “It’s very nice. You both do very good work here. No, no, no, no, don’t get up.” She holds out a hand to you both and you freeze. “That would be very rude.”

“...r-rude?” You say, terrified that now that you’ve screwed up, the way you always knew you would, that you’ve done something wrong and offended your goddess somehow.  
  
“ _I_ would think so. I mean, Jade hasn’t even come yet.”

It is _so_ quiet for a moment. You’re pretty sure your jaw had already dropped, but now it definitely drops again, if that was possible.

“Well?” Your goddess, sitting on the altar, says, expectantly, looking directly at Rose now.

You turn to your partner, already reaching down to undo your sash. “...yeah, Rose,” you say, a little bit of mischief stirring, “ _Well?_ ” Her brow crinkles. She’s still glancing between you and the being at the foot of the statue.

Something moves over your arms and across your shoulders, rippling and substantial like solidified air, and you feel your skimpy ritual robe shrug off you of its own accord. Goosebumps spark up your forearms in its wake and you look at the Daughter of Death as She gestures with Her outstretched left hand, brushing your clothing aside without touching it, still smiling at you, excited, intrigued.  
  
The hairs all over your body stand up as you realize what is happening, and as you look back at Rose, you know that she’s starting to understand it too. “ _Rose_ ,” you whisper, “ _It worked. Our ritual._ ”

“I know.” She gazes at your naked torso and small breasts, her violet eyes wide, and reaches out for you.

“This has never happened before,” you start to say, but then Rose’s hands skim down across your nipples and down your sides as she pulls you towards her and you eagerly scoot into her lap, and then her breasts are touching yours and she’s kissing you and everything feels extremely good and god you’ve been waiting for this all day and then one of her hands is cupping your breast and the other one is going down into your extremely damp high-cut panties and it is very hard to say sentences that make sense and have words in the right order.

“No,” Rose murmurs, her fingers teasing the edge of your slit, smiling a bit as she feels how wet you are. She pulls your underwear down to reveal your dark bush and sinks her hand into it, and you make a tiny, sharp gasp through your nose as she passes her thumb over your clit. Rose’s hands look delicate, but her fingers are covered in little calluses from the knitting she loves to pass the time with, and they feel divine (hee hee) as they rub back and forth over your bud.

“So,” you stutter out, “why did it nev-never work before? We - _oh!_ \- we’ve done this tons- _oh!_ \- tons of ti-times, and we’ve done other rituals-”

Two of Rose’s fingers slip in between your lips and curve in that _really_ specific way that no one who isn’t her can do and you _moan_ , god, the things Rose can do with her hands, “This is the first time this year,” she says. “Remember? The year five thousand.” She pinches your nipple and _rolls_ it and you let out a little _yip_ of pleasure. “The year of the Arrival.”

“So - so - the prophecies- _oh!_ ”  
  
“They were true,” Rose says, and adds a third finger, and _really_ starts to work you.

“Of course they were,” That infinitely pleased-sounding voice that could not be produced by any human throat pipes in as you start to rut yourself against Rose’s hand, groaning and mumbling. “We gave them to you, didn’t we, and we don't know everything but we know a whole lot.” You manage to turn your head and blink your eyes clear (ish) to look at Her. She has a copy of the _Climb_ floating in front of Her, unassisted, hands-free (hee hee), and the pages are turning with tiny little shakes of Her head. “I suppose it’s understandable that you didn’t think they would actually come true, though, you seem to have interpreted a lot of what I told the Gravekeeper metaphorically, when it definitely wasn’t.”

Rose turns to look at Her like a targeting computer. “It’s true, then.” she says, excited beyond just being turned on. “I’ve been telling everyone for _years_. I use your original words.”

“Yes, I know. That’s part of why I came here.” She says, nodding happily. “I’m extremely impressed by you both. I guess it’s not really surprising, but still.”

“Why - why isn’t it surprising?” you manage to get out in between the beautiful prickly heat flowing from your clit and your nipples up into your brain. Your arms clasp tightly around Rose’s neck and shoulders.

“And what’s the other part?” Rose interjects.

“Well, that’s kind of complicated, I suppose. I came here partly because of your particular faith, partly because I wanted to see this timeline’s versions of you, partly because-” Something happens in your ears and in your brain, like the thing She says was dubbed over with something else as it goes into your ears, the original word is still there, just barely, at the very edge of your perception, but what you hear is “-t͡he͜ ͢H̛u͢n̛tre͠s҉s told me I should ... but mostly because you invited me.”  
  
“But we’re far from the only people celebrating the love host tonight. And unless by some catastrophic coincidence Jade and I-” she pushes her fingers up into you and crooks them and it makes you whine into her shoulder, “-are the only members of our sect who actually read our book, which I guess is not impossible but I think is _highly_ unlikely, I don’t -” Rose abruptly slows down in her relentless attention to your pussy and your boobs and her voice gets considerably higher-pitched, “ _What_ are you doing?"

Your eyes, which had drifted shut, snap open.

Your Daughter of Death is taking off Her clothes.

You both _stare_ , spellbound, as She pulls Her robe, so similar to your normal vestments, over Her head and allows it to fall down onto the altar. “I’m getting naked,” She chirps, pleasantly. “Like I said, you invited me. I guess to be fair you did only invite me to _watch_ , but I would really _love_ to join in. This celebration you’ve come up with is so wonderful, it’s the best proof I could ever ask for that everything turned out the way we wanted it to. You’re following what we taught you, but you’re iterating on it, evolving it, you’re transforming it into other things,” Her body is lean and powerfully muscled, very like yours in some ways, but it’s so hard to make that comparison, She is _not_ like you, She is some _thing_ else completely, something strange and otherworldly and spellbinding. Her arms are thicker than Rose’s, but She has larger breasts than you, restrained by a simple band of red silk. “You’ve followed what we told you faithfully, but you’re also _free_ , and that’s amazing, don’t you understand? You’re creating something _new_ , something I would never have thought of, but it’s _exactly_ what I wanted for you. We’re allowed to define for ourselves now what the optimal timeline is and you’re _doing it_ ,” She slides the baggy trousers, dark red like wine, down Her legs and shakes them off. Her hips flare like Rose’s, though not as generously.

“B-be that as it may,” Rose stammers, “that - that doesn’t really explain why you came here, to _us_ , there are so many other people doing this tonight, there must be hundreds of shrines, they would all have said the same words-”  
  
“Yeah, but you two are the hottest,” the Daughter of Death says.

Neither of you can even _begin_ to come up with a response to that.

“So, what are you waiting for?” She says, bright-eyed, pushing a hand into Her own red undies, “Jade still hasn’t come.”

Rose is still gaping at the Daughter, you can see her eyes flitting back and forth in millimeters like she does when she’s thinking _really_ hard about something, and there’s way too much of that and nowhere near enough fingering happening so you grab her by the face with one hand and turn her to look at you, “ _Rose Lalonde you have just been commanded personally by your goddess the Daughter of Death to get me off, and if that isn’t enough for you to stop leaving me hanging there is no help for you!!!_ ”  
  
And you mash your lips against hers and kiss her, hungrily, you still have her juices on your lips and you know she can taste it, you pull your other hand forward and paw at her breast again, and she gasps into your mouth and her fingers start to work inside you again. “Yes,” you croon, “ _Yes, right there,_ ” you know she doesn’t need you to tell her how to make you cream yourself but you can also feel the Daughter’s powerful red eyes on you, anticipating, and you want to give Her a real show, “Yes, _yes, yes, Rose,”_ your moans get higher and higher-pitched, your breath getting faster and faster as her fingers inch closer and closer to that perfect spot inside you and her thumb keeps drawing perfect sexy circles of rapture on your clit, “ _yes, come on, just like that, yes, just a little more, a little more,_ ”

And she builds you up, higher and higher, lifting you into the sky above, carrying you up until behind your closed eyelids stars glitter and supernovae explode like fireworks with each tweak of your nipple, she sends you back in time to the beginning, each stroke of her thumb on your bud is a press of probability against the concentrated, infinitesimal point of potential existence in the Void, every moment bringing it closer and closer to fruition, every touch making fulfillment more and more likely, until at last, with her fingers and thumbs and mouth, she creates the universe, and you ascend to the heavens.

You huddle there on her lap, arms and legs wrapped around her, both of you sweaty and sticky, and she holds you and kisses your nose and your mouth and your cheeks as you float back down to Earth, sliding down off of her lap a bit.

“You two are so lovely together.” That voice shakes you out of your afterglow, warm and engaged but unearthly and … almost _burred_ , like there’s a frog in Her throat and that’s just how She is, and you turn to look. Her underwear are around Her ankles and Her hand is rubbing steadily at Her crotch, which is dripping with some deep red substance, _almost_ like blood but not quite, just enough not to be unnerving. Her hand is wrapped around something that looks kind of like a dick but _definitely_ isn’t, and She’s looking at both of you with a hunger that makes shivers run up your spine. “Good job, Rose. That was so good. _So_ good, mmm.” She gives whatever that is wriggling between Her legs an extra little tug and sighs. “Ahh. Come here.” She beckons with the hand that isn’t busy with Her heavenly alien junk.  
  
You both climb unsteadily to your feet and step up to the altar, naked. She looks at you with an excitement and curiosity that makes your clit tingle and your heart flutter and points at Rose, pressing the fingers of Her free hand together, and Rose _keens._

You look over at her, and before your eyes is yet another miracle, as you can actually _see_ the flesh of her breasts rippling and contorting. Rose sucks in a breath, her eyes round as plates, her legs shaking as the circular bands of force move inwards from the sides of her chest, making shrinking rings of recessed skin until they collapse onto her nipples and Rose jumps and releases another involuntary little squeak of pleasure. “Is that good?” your goddess asks, tilting Her horned head. “I don’t know _all_ the ins and outs of human anatomy yet, but it sure _looks_ like-”

“ _Literally never stop,_ ” Rose gasps.

In response the speed of the pulses of force intensifies, and Rose groans and falls to her knees before her goddess.

The Daughter’s smile widens.  
  
“How are you doing that?” you say, recovering your voice. “Is it magic?”

“Oh, no!” She laughs as if this question was _hilarious_ . “Just psionics.”  
  
“Is - is that your divine power??” you can’t tear your eyes away from Rose on the floor, shaking in ecstasy, so overstimmed that she can’t draw enough breath to moan or cry out.

“No, silly,” says the Daughter. “That’s just my thinkpan matter. It’s genetic.” You _literally_ cannot quite comprehend the scale of the revelations you are receiving right now, and you are pretty sure Rose would like to be in on them. You raise a hand, timidly. “Um…”  
  
She turns Her full, mesmerizing attention onto you and you almost choke up. “Um. Could You … let Rose … like, let her breathe a little?”

“Oh!!” She retracts Her wrist and Rose crumples forward onto the floor, gasping desperately for air. You wonder if that counts as an answered prayer? “She told me not to stop, so I thought she was enjoying it! Did I hurt her? Did I hurt you, Rose?” She leans down off the altar, finally taking Her hand away from Her own flexible cock (or whatever it is) to reach out. “...are you into that?”  
  
“S-sometimes.” Rose wheezes. “Don’t worry. It felt amazing. H-heavenly, if you’ll forgive the pun.” You snort a little and momentarily forget that you are in the presence of the actual real Daughter of Death, because apparently being in the presence of the actual real Daughter of Death is not enough to make Rose stop being a goof. “I’m sorry - so You - the gods - your species is … psionically active?” She pulls herself up a bit.

“Oh, yes, some of us. It varies by bloodcaste, of course.”  
  
“Blood - caste. And - and if that isn’t Your … divine power, then what is?”

“Time, of course!” The Daughter of Death smiles, widely. “You should know that, I thought. You, especially, Rose, you’ve listened to the _actual_ meaning of what I said. Traveling through time, across timelines, shaping them, making them, destroying them.”

“...can You show us?” you ask, completely aware how absurd and presumptuous it is of you to ask for a miracle, but unable to stop yourself.

“Maybe later,” the Daughter says, breezily, as if you _hadn’t_ just done something ridiculous and horribly rude and maybe even blasphemous? “There’s no need right now. The events that are occurring at this moment are precisely the right ones. This is exactly the timeline I want to be experiencing - the one where, in a few seconds, those big, beautiful rumble spheres of yours are going to be wrapped around my bulge.”

Silence greets this extraordinary pronouncement, and then She spreads Her legs and looks at Rose.

You both stare at the tendril above where your Daughter’s slit should be, peeking out from some kind of recessed organic pouch. Your Daughter’s skin has a smooth, shiny cast to it, totally hairless, if it has pores or blemishes you can’t see them, but the tentacle (because that’s what it is. Your goddess has a tentacle dick.) is thick and wet and muscular - now that you actually look at it, it kind of just looks _like_ a muscle. It undulates at you, slowly, a red substance seeping from it and where Her slit should be as it seems to swell and extend in length.  
  
Rose, in response to being commanded by the physical manifestation of her alien goddess to give Her bizarre flexile xeno-phallus a titfucking, licks her lips, and kneels down, because of course that’s what she does.  
  
(You’re not actually surprised. You’ve seen her fanfiction.)

“...so, you can .... perceive all of time?” Rose asks, shuffling forward across the carpet.

“Not simultaneously,” She says, affably, like She was just telling you about a new brand of shampoo She was using or something. (She probably goes through a lot of shampoo, you think, looking at Her enormous mane of hair. Do divinities need shampoo? Do they take showers??) “But I have been to many different points on many different timelines, and witnessed things from many perspectives. And I have met versions of myself from even more timelines and coordinates! Even at least one from another reality entirely!  And all of them assured me that this is where and when I should be right now.” Rose is staring up at the Daughter, unblinking, as she scoots in between Her thighs.

“To fulfill destiny? Or a prophecy?” you say, your voice barely above a whisper.

“No,” She says, “because it’s going to be really, _really hot_.”

And She places a hand on Rose’s head, like She’s administering a benediction. Your cheeks go bright red. You really cannot argue with that.

Rose stares intently at the organ between Her legs (She called it a ‘bulge’, right?) and reaches towards it hesitantly. You find yourself moving to the side to get a better look at what she’s doing. The Daughter sees you and beckons you closer. You step over to Her, trembling, not from fear or anxiety but from anticipation. Those huge, red-flecked yellow eyes, like the bloodstone gems Grandpa showed you that are beautiful because of their imperfection, turn on you again, Her gaze encompasses you and burns away all doubt. Her smile spans the horizon. You start to tune out, lost and enthralled by your goddess’s regard.  
  
She takes you by the chin and draws you closer, and presses your lips against Hers. You _gasp_ . Her touch is so _hot_ , you can practically feel the energy humming under Her skin, the inside of Her mouth as Her tongue slips into yours almost burns, you’ve never felt anything like it, you quiver again and lean forwards towards Her, helplessly. She laughs into your mouth and continues to kiss you, sloppy, careless, unrestrained, all the Time in the world. She tastes like nuts and mushrooms, and ash and crystal. A smooth, alien hand travels from your chin, across your cheek, down your neck and over your collarbone, it’s _so_ smooth, like the skin of a seal or a stingray, it would be unpleasant if it wasn’t so _warm_ , it runs down over your breast and you shiver.

“You’re so _soft_ ,” She’s saying, fascinated. She pulls away from your mouth to look down at your body, to inspect you, and you blush furiously, you haven’t felt like this since you were a silly little girl crushing on Dave, you want so badly to meet with Her approval, you want Her to want you, you want Her to _love_ you the way you think you already love Her. She squeezes your breast with one warm, warm hand and you whimper.

She gasps, too, a long, satisfied expulsion of breath, and you both look down to see Rose licking at the length of the red tendril, her brow furrowed in a way that you know means she’s in her element, when she’s up against something unfamiliar, an enemy that she has to defeat by learning. With each stroke of her tongue there’s a ripple of muscle and a little more of the tendril emerges. “That’s good. Good job, Rose.” She murmurs. You wonder if that makes Rose’s heart do backflips. You wonder if being praised directly by Her feels as good as the little jealous briarthorn going through your chest makes it seem like.

“I take it-” Rose says in between licks, “-there’s more of this - inside? If there isn’t - we’re going to - have some - logistical-” it takes her an entire pause to get all four syllables of that word out and you giggle despite yourself, “-issues - getting it  - in between the girls here.”

“Of course! You just have to - _mhm!_ get it to unsheathe all the way first, ooh, yeah, I think I’m almost there-”

And there’s one more tremor in your Daughter’s lower body, almost imperceptible, as some muscle or cluster of muscles _releases_ , and all at once another three or four inches of tentacle come sliding out. Your goddess makes a _totally_ inhuman noise, a _chirrr_ like a giant bug, and sighs again with relief. Rose takes all of this in with her eyes, and then runs her tongue aaaaall the way up its glistening length. There’s a humming in the air like a phone on vibrate and the Daughter chirps and gasps again, Her hips rolling in their sockets, caressing the sides of Rose’s head. Your hand has found its way down to your crotch and is rubbing your clit, your eyes fixed on the image of your Sister and partner and best friend worshipping the Daughter of Death’s alien cock with her lovely, lovely lips.

The bulge tentacle moves of its own accord and slithers in between Rose’s breasts as Rose scoops them up in both hands. “Oooooh…” She murmurs as Rose presses her boobs together.   A bizarre _crk-crk-crk_ ing sound emanates from your Daughter’s throat, strange and sensual, as She rolls Her head back, a deeply satisfied expression on Her face, and spreads Her hands out on the altar. You expect Her to start thrusting, but instead it looks like the bulge just starts … _pulsing_ , like peristalsis. Rose’s eyes widen, her lips part, and she starts working her own boobs around the tendril, that red fluid coating the place where they meet and spreading across the tops of her breasts.  
  
This _might_ be the hottest thing you’ve ever seen.

“ _So_ soft.” She says again, Her beautiful alien eyes closed and Her head tilted up towards the stars as She fucks Rose’s boobs. “Mmmmhm.” You can actually see the muscular motion of it, every second or so the couple of inches of the protruding tip _expands_ and swells, the substance coating it is smeared all over the speckled pale flesh of Rose’s breasts, the Daughter of Death is murmuring and gasping and _buzzing_ and fluid is dripping steadily from Her and getting all over the altar, for a moment that doesn’t seem quite right to you until you realize that this is probably the single holiest place in the entire faith now. You’re leaning against the altar at this point to hold yourself up as you stroke yourself. Some of it’s getting on you. You really, really don’t care. Your eyes are magnetized to those couple of inches of red muscle pulsing in between your sacred lover’s beautiful boobs, while your fingers work quietly but _furiously_ at your clit and lips. Rose is bearing down on Her crotch and her whole body is flushed. She sounds short of breath. It must feel _really_ good. You kind of wish yours were big enough to do this properly.

“Some of the others didn’t think you could survive,” Her words are dotted with pants and sighs and more little chirps and creaks and rumbles that don’t seem to come from Her lips or tongue. “To be fair, the idea of sentient _mammals_ making a whole civilization _did_ seem kind of silly. But I knew you could do it, as long as we guided you,” that interference happens in your ears again, and whatever it is She says what your ears get out of it is ‘the Guide’ - the god of bonds, the keeper of secrets, and ‘the Spider’ the goddess of luck and wealth, She that dealt your Daughter Her first death; “T͟h͜e ̷G͞u̡ide made a bet with the̸ ̵Spi̸d͟er that you would make something great, and I guess he won, but the actual winner was my bulge.”

“What did He bet Her?” you randomly grab a question out of the several million or so spinning through your head.

“Oh, he bet her a favor, which wasn’t very smart of him, but, you know. He gets angry sometimes. Actually he gets angry basically all the time. But _she_ bet _him_ that she’d wear something in front of her followers that he and the D҉r̸a͜g̸on were going to design themselves.” She laughs, joyful and without mercy. Your heart aches again. “It’s lucky for everyone that you did so well.”  
  
“We’ve done well?” Rose says, unevenly through the constant motion of the tentacle throbbing between her breasts and occasionally poking her in the chin. She’s panting. You would love to go to town on her clit while she’s doing this and completely drive her crazy, overheat her brain and just shut it off for a while, you know how much she loves that. “Have we pleased You?”  
  
“Oh, you’re pleasing me a _lot_ right now,” the Daughter says, making an extravagant gyration of Her neck on Her shoulders. Your eyes are drawn to Her collarbone, or where Her collarbone should be. There are definitely bones under that glossy grey skin, but not the same bones you have. “Mmmmmhm. Mmmm. I bet T̷h̸͞͞e̕ ̵Pol̛a͟r͝it̶i̧es̵ would say that any civilization that can make anyone that can do _this_ to my bulge _has_ to be a success. I can’t wait for him to try it. Gosh! Do you actually feed your newly hatched offspring with those?”

Your brain is basically about to break under the weight of this much truth. You kind of wish Dave was here so that he could say something dumb and long-winded and somehow _super_ accurate about how heavy all this truth is. “ _The Polarities?”_ You and Rose burst out at exactly the same time. Rose’s attention to the titjob kind of falters. The Daughter of Death blinks at you. “As- as in, the Architect and the Opposing Force?” You sputter.  
  
“He? As in, the singular pronoun?” Rose says in a voice that’s way too much like a demand considering who she’s talking to. You get kind of nervous for a moment.  
  
She nods. “Oh, yes. He has two identities. He has two of everything. Sometimes it is a little silly, but it makes him happy.”

“I - I’m sorry,” Rose’s violet eyes are wide and round as coins. “But - please, we have to define our terms - you’re talking about the Architect of Fate, your moirail? He that knows the doom of all beings, even you, the gods, and will be there at your side when the universe ends?”  
  
The goddess _pouts_ . Holy crap, divinities can _pout_ . “Moirail is … kind of a limiting way to think about it, as weird as that sounds. Is that really what you wrote down? That he’s my moirail? Ugggh, I don’t really think that’s accurate, you should change that, probably…”  
  
She sure is just casually resolving a theological question that people have been fighting over for actual thousands of years, and raising a _whole_ bunch of other ones at the same time, and Rose’s eyes get even wider, it looks like they are going to pop out of her head like overfilled beach balls, and oh no you know where this goes. She is absolutely going to stop everything to quiz the Daughter of Death about Her romantic drama, because she is Rose Lalonde and she can’t turn this off. You know this from long experience.  
  
So, you turn it off for her. Or, turn her on, more accurately, as you slot yourself in behind her, letting yourself sink into her plush curves, and wrap your arms around her, taking her breasts in your hands. That divine red xenocum your goddess is dripping all over the place starts to get on your fingers. (It smells bitter and exotic. You kind of wonder what it tastes like.) “Rose,” you say. Both of them gasp as you squeeze Rose’s breasts, starting to work them around the Daughters’s bulge-tentacle thing again. “Rose, focus. Sex, now. Remember? _Sex._ You’re giving the Daughter of Death a titfuck.”  
  
“That seems like the sort of thing that would be difficult to forget about," She says, another musical little chitter erupting from somewhere in Her divine grey torso.  
  
“You’d think that,” you say, getting your fingers around Rose’s nipples again and pinching them between with scissoring motions. Rose _moans_ and your clit pulses again, “but Rose is very easily distracted by interesting lore and information. Thankfully she is also pretty easy to redistract onto the thing she got distracted from.” You aren’t sure whether to stare at your diety’s face in shameless, hedonistic pleasure as She fucks your best friend’s boobs or at Her bulge as it ripples and drips between said boobs. Both are equally mesmerizing.  
  
“This is good information,” the Daughter says, agreeably..  
  
Rose is almost as red as your goddess’s slimy inhuman spunk, sandwiched in between you and the Daughter’s muscled body and powerful thighs. You’re starting to get jealous. You want to bury your head in between those thighs. There is a collection of red slime like a tidepool gathering in the valley of Rose’s cleavage.

You really wish you had a camera.  
  
“Is - is it just going to keep coming?” Rose pants. Her boobs are _covered_ in the stuff.  
  
Your goddess blinks at you, opening Her eyes partway from the state of relaxation your hands and Rose’s boobs seem to have lulled Her into. “Of course. I have lots left.” She frowns, suddenly. “Where’s yours? Are you two getting off?”  
  
“We, uhm.” Rose clears her throat. “We don’t make as much. We’re women, so sometimes we don’t actually make any? And it mainly comes out at the end of our climax…”  
  
“Ohhhh!” She looks very interested, and oh no. Do you have _two_ nerds to keep focused on sex instead of going off into an infodump now??  
  
This requires direct intervention, obviously. “Rose is getting awfully sticky,” you address the goddess. “I know You came here for her boobs and everything - which is totally understandable by the way, they really are the best-” you give them another squeeze and are rewarded with yet another squeaky moan from Rose, “-but do I have anything that can interest You? Maybe give her a break?”

She smiles. “You’re so right! I did come here for you both. Come on,” She beckons, opening Her legs and letting Rose slide out of the way. She slumps to the side, grasping at the altar to steady herself, as you move into her place with unseemly eagerness. You stare at that writhing, dripping tendril as it slides out from between Rose’s tits, surging and lashing with what you’re absolutely sure is excitement.

“Can I…” you start to ask.  
  
She smiles. “Yes, absolutely!” you reach out, carefully, taking it in one hand, letting it coil around your fingers. The goddess purrs like a cicada. “I have to say,” She’s going on, sounding like She’s talking about some kind of unusual weather, “when I told myself about this, I thought I was kind of crazy. Putting my bulge in someone’s talk blaster, where their fangs are, did not seem advisable. But several of me assured me that it was absolutely worth it - and that you don’t really have fangs, anyway.”

You stare, fascinated in that part of you that crawled around outside for hours when you were little, skinning your knees and covering them with grass stains as you watched ants march back and forth or followed the movements of inchworms from one end of a clearing to the other or tossing bits of your lunch into the ponds and observing how the fish’s mouthparts worked when they swam up to grab them. “It’s retractable?” you ask, too interested to be timid or awed. “And … prehensile?”

“Mhm-hm!” She gazes down at you, eyes still refusing to blink, with this perfect expression on Her face, expectant - She’s waiting for you to serve Her - but patient, smiling, whatever you do, it’ll be something She’s happy with.  
  
You love Her _so_ much.

“Can you, like, control it?” you ask. “Like a squid’s tentacle, or something?”

She nods, Her grin widening as you start to slowly run your hand up and down its slick length, feeling it coil in your grasp, testing its flexibility and give. You don’t want to accidentally hurt the Daughter of Death’s tentacle dick while you’re sucking Her off, which, wow, that is really not a thought you expected to have to think when you got up this morning! “Some,” She says. “Some of us are better at it than others. I have not had a whole lot of practice. But I’ve read that some g̸o͘d͘͢s̷͡ can move it and bend it almost like a touch stalk! They are supposed to be _really_ good at sex.”

“...we have so many questions.” you say, feeling insufficient. You wish for the billionth time that you had Rose’s gift with words.  
  
“Then answer some of them now!” the Daughter of Death exclaims, eagerly, and that invisible mental force grabs hold of your head - not roughly, but not exactly gently, either - and pulls it forwards. “You’ll soon be sharing your world with ou͜r̵ ͡c͡h̛i̢l̡dr͠en̛, so you should get to know how their bodies work,” The tendril collides with your face, immediately filling your nose with that bitter, overpowering scent and painting your face with sludge. “So start with mine.” You part your lips, and immediately, it wriggles into your mouth.  
  
The whole world tastes like nuts and dark chocolate and seasoned shrimp, and … something else, some kind of piercing, underlying flavor that swarms your senses, some intense chemical tang that your palette can’t process. It tastes _nothing_ like human pussy or human dick, that’s for absolutely sure. It's unique and strange and compelling, just like everything else about your goddess.

“Yes,” She’s saying, wailing, expressing Her joy with both Her mouth and Her strange, insectoid other voice, " _yes, yes,_ **_yes_ ** , Jade. You are going to be one of the primary architects of the coming metamorphosis, you both will be my limbs in what is about to happen, so you must understand me _perfectly_ ,”

The bulge starts to ripple in your mouth, and you can feel your lips being forced to make way as the pulses of muscle travel down its length, depositing a _gush_ of thick fluid in your mouth. You cough, spraying it over the front of the altar, but some of it slides down your throat, rich and syrupy. “Yes, ohhh, hhhnnn, ” You moan around Her dick. Everything is going to taste like your Daughter’s cum for _days._ “yes, _yes,_ **_yes_ ** , yes, Jade, just like that, you must discover me, you must gain the most intimate understanding of me possible, with your thinkpan but also with your lips and your tongue and your hands,”

It’s difficult at first - you are not bad at giving blowjobs, and you like doing it more than Rose does, but those skills don’t really translate over to servicing something this soft and flexible. You keep gagging, constantly being surprised with just how deceptively fast the stuff piles up in your mouth - and your Daughter, merciful being that She is, offers to give you some space every time you need to catch your breath or spit some of it out, but every time you shake your head and dive back in, and slowly, steadily, you settle into a rhythm, sucking on the wriggling thing like a delicious dessert treat, stroking it constantly with your mouth, and the Daughter of Death keens and gasps and cries out, chirps and buzzes and clicks filling the shrine and rebounding off the walls and broadcasting out into the endless starry night, your existence beginning and ending with the Daughter’s thighs clamped on either side of your head, Her bulge between your lips, endlessly pulsating and swelling, the taste of Her thick fluid and the feeling of it sliding glottally down your throat, the endless sweltering heat of Her body around your face, and at the base of it all your clit throbbing, crying out with each motion of the bulge, each time you swallow, each time the Daughter’s muscles contract with a particularly violent spasm of pleasure and threaten to crush your head like a melon.  
  
You sink into it, totally focused on the alien cock in your mouth and the relentless rhythm of the blowjob and your love for the being it’s attached to, as you bestow your adoration upon Her, allowing Her to pour Her terrifying revelations into your ears the same way Her cum pours down your gullet.

Eventually, you become aware of a tapping at the top of your head, and that vice grip on your skull relents, and before you know it you’re falling backwards, and then you’re laying against something soft. And warm. And sticky. You think you know this soft something. You are pretty sure it is Rose. You feel her callused fingers stroking your face and tracing the curves of your body. You are gasping for breath, struggling to inhale through the film of otherworldly sludge coating your lips and the inside of your esophagus.

“Are you alright?” Rose is asking. You cough, but nod, shakily. There is a goofy, sloshed smile on your face. Your whole front is covered in sticky red fluid. Your vision is fuzzy without your glasses, and also just in general after all that, but there is a lot of red, all over the place. Rose has a bag of pretzel bites and a glass of seltzer in her hands, and she pushes little portions of both on you. Rose knows that if you do a lot of sex really hard, you need to refuel a little in the middle of it. Rose is _such_ a good best friend who you have crazy monkey sex with for religious reasons.

The Daughter looks down at you both, that endless smile still all over Her face, though it’s calmed down a little now, not as many teeth, a lot more happiness. Her legs are spread lewdly, Her thighs covered in red, Her bulge still coiling lazily. She is so beautiful. You can’t even see Her properly and She is still so, _so_ beautiful.  “You two are so sweet,” She says, all of a sudden. “I think she was right about you.” Rose is pouring cool, fizzy drink down your throat and running her fingers through your hair. God, it really needs to be brushed.  
  
“Who?” Rose asks, since your mouth is full, and your throat is still kinda worn out.  
  
“The͜ Huntr҉ess,҉” She says. “We were hanging out, having a tea party, and she was talking about all her favorite ships, and she _insisted_ that you two needed to be flushed together.”  
  
You cough again, in astonishment. “You - You mean-”  
  
“The Huntress believes that - that Jade and I-”  
  
“Me and Rose-”  
  
“‘Rose and _I-_ ’, Jade-”

You turn your head to look at Rose. She’s blushing furiously. You grin at her. It’s not your decision. The grin just happens on its own. The Daughter laughs, _really_ loud. “Yes. You are definitely destined to be together. You are, in every future I’m aware of that has a positive outcome.”

“How-” Rose swallows, actually lost for words, one of only maybe three times you’ve ever seen that. “How … how much of our future do You know?”

“A lot! Which also means almost none, because there are infinite futures, infinite times. There is a timeline which overlaps almost completely with this one, that is almost exactly the same, except that drink you had in your sylladex is a different flavor. There is a timeline where atoms scattered along different trajectories, where light failed to filter through dust clouds at just the right frequency, where the physical conditions of your world developed such that life never evolved in the first place, and this planet never became our garden. There is a timeline, far away in another reality entirely, where you are gods yourselves, and because of your actions there, we were set free from the cruel grasp of a tyrant, and every freedom and good thing we have was made possible.”  
  
You feel like you are teetering on the edge of a cliff, or looking down off the edge of a skyscraper. Your stomach is full of rocks. Rose’s arms close around you, hugging you that much more tightly. “And a constant, in every one of those timelines,” She continues, smiling at you, Her face glowing with a boundless, alien love that takes no prisoners and cannot be held back, that will love and love and love until you are ash and entropy has taken the names on your gravestones, “is that you four are always together. Even when you are separated by entire universes, you are bound together, your destinies are four threads in the same cosmic string, a woven thread of **Breath** and **Light** and **Time** and **Space** that spans this continuum and back.”

“Which - which four,” Rose starts to say, gazing at the Daughter in open-mouthed amazement - and what you are pretty sure is _longing_ \- and you cut her off, speaking up instantly, unbidden, somehow knowing the answer by heart.

“Me, and Rose,” you say, “and Dave, and John.”

Your head swims. How did you know that? You realize, the shock energizing your dizzy, sex-drunk brain, that you’re not questioning whether it’s true - what She’s told you is absolutely a hundred percent correct, you know that in your bones, the same way you know that spiders spin webs and that the moon waxes and wanes and that gravity pulls down - the only question is _how_ do you know it?

It’s not a ridiculous claim, though, when you actually think about it. You were the first real friends any of you had ever had, and you have stayed friends - and more, sometimes - for so long that it was honestly kind of a shock when you grew up and got to know other people and realized that most people _don’t_ make best friends when they’re teenagers who stick with them for the rest of their existences. You think a lot of people go through their lives without having friends like that at all. Why should it be silly that the four of you, who have been through everything together, should share some higher bond, acknowledged by the gods themselves?

Yes, you say. That _is_ right. You think that you have probably always known it, deep in your heart, in the same part of you that loves the Daughter of Death.

“Daughter,” Rose is saying, as close to babbling as you’ve probably ever heard her, “You mentioned ‘wanting to meet this timeline’s version of us’ - that implies that You knew us in other timelines? What does - what were-”

She slides down off the now thoroughly-consecrated altar. “Move over. I want to try Jade’s nook.” She says, kneeling down. Behind you Rose makes a strained little gulp. At some point She lost Her little red bra wrap or took it off or something because now you can see Her boobs - they’re flat, round, featureless, no nipples or areolae.

You blink. “My - my what?” but Her eyes are staring down in between your flanks, so you’re pretty sure you know what She’s talking about. Her bulge writhes back and forth, looking like an animal sniffing hungrily for something.

Your legs slide open.

She looms over you, terrifying and gorgeous, Her naked body rippling with inhuman muscle and sinew, eyes threatening to suck you in again, to push your head down into those yellow tidepools and wash you away in between the fragments of maroon gemstones floating in them, and She slides overtop of you, nudging you onto your back and inserting Herself between your legs. You can feel your pussy trembling in anticipation. Next to your head, Rose gasps, and you feel every displaced atom of air against your left ear.  
  
The bulge slides into you, making you twitch at how _hot_ it is, Her whole body is so warm, it’s like you’re being fucked by a radiator, Her dick is thick and tapered and covered in weird little cilia hairs that tickle your insides and it just … kind of … keeps going…  
  
Your eyes widen as it ... fills you up, fills you _all the way up_ , there’s _so much_ of it - normally you don’t like dicks that are too big but it’s not like a human one at all, it’s soft and squishy and pliable and it stretches you softly, pleasantly. She chirrups and buzzes against you as your pussy clenches around it, and you shudder at the amazing feeling. “Oh, ohh, wowww…”  
  
Then it _flexes_ inside you, and the universe turns upside down.

Gravity inverts. Every nerve and neuron you have lights up until an electrical fire erupts in your brain. Your clit bursts like a dying star and a black hole is born between your thighs, your legs wrapping around the Daughter of Death and forming a vacuum seal. Your mouth is wide open and you’re screaming, you don’t remember when that happened, and your head thunks against the floor and She’s on top of you, Her smooth, forceful hands pushing you down into the carpet and that thing is rippling and thrashing inside you, you can actually feel it filling you up with that hot red fluid, making your bud pulse with sparkling pleasure each time it curls and uncurls.

“ _God_ , you’re good,” You open your eyes, your vision blurry with blissed-out tears, and She commands all of your vision, the same way She commands your heart. “You’re so _tight_ , so _soft_ , you’re even better than Rose’s breasts,” Her eyes are wide and crazed, Her hair falling over you like a waterfall, rocking back and forth on top of you as Her bulge fucks you ruthlessly, “Oh, I love this, I love you all, I’m so _proud_ of you,” your whole field of view is Her face and the backdrop of the glimmering night sky behind Her, above you, you can see the statue towering over you both, granite wings outstretched as Her real ones flutter with excitement on Her back, showering you with glittering particles, and your heart swells with joy until you think it’s going to explode out of your chest. “I was dead for so long, and now I am here, and alive again, and you are alive too, oh, _god_ , you’re _so_ alive, mmhm, so alive, I love you both, mmmmhm, Rose, Rose come here-”

Your vision is suddenly obscured by Rose’s boobs, which, if you have to look at anything besides the Daughter of Death’s star-haloed face, is pretty darn good. She pulls her in close and snags her lips and you watch them make out, Rose completely giving herself over the way she does when she’s having the absolute best sex, moaning excitedly as your goddess practically eats her face, pushing Her tongue into her mouth. Rose kisses back, treating Her to your best Earth French kiss, as a Happy Arrival present. “Mmmhmmm, you taste really good, Rose,”

“I… always … freshen my breath … before a ritual,” she pants, “l-lavender and myrrh…”

“That’s a good idea,” She says. “Is that in your holy book?”

“Ah - no, no, not the _Cli-Climb,_ it’s in our - our sect’s m-manual, though-”  
  
“It should be in the main book. I will have to do a second draft. It needs some edits anyway.”  
  
Rose gives a strangled little gulp. You laugh, which is all you have the breath for with how hard She’s fucking you. You’re going to have to re-learn a whole bunch of scripture, you bet.

You think you are going to have to re-learn a lot of things.

That intangible psychic force runs across you again, dragging Rose forward. Your eyes widen, but before you can say or do anything her slick pussy has been positioned directly over your face, and then your entire field of eyesight is obscured by Rose’s butt.  
  
There are much worse places to be, you think as you start licking. You like looking at Rose’s ass a whole lot. You think, honestly, that Rose’s ass is pretty much a miracle, and you are going to give thanks to the Daughter of Death for creating it. No, actually, you are going to give thanks to all the gods. For making the world. And letting you exist. But mostly for making Rose’s ass. Rose shrieks on top of you, God you love the noises she makes.

You’re so glad that you could do this. That you could welcome Her to the world She helped create the best way you know how - with your bodies, with the lovemaking skills you’ve been practicing in Her name for years now. You’re so glad that She is fucking you senseless right now, trilling and fluting and announcing Her pleasure to the universe as loud as She can, letting everyone and everything know how good you’re making Her feel. You form the bottom leg of a holy triangle, unable to move, pinned in place by the Daughter of Death’s muscle atop you and the constant pressure of Her miraculous mind, and Rose’s soft, curvy weight sitting on your face, and all you can do for the next indiscernible span of time is lick and make desperate sex noises into Rose’s slit, helpless while your beloved divinity screws your brains out.

You come twice, at least. It _might_ have been three times, you aren’t sure. Your grey matter kind of stops processing things that could be called thoughts somewhere in between the first and the second, right around the time the Daughter of Death started working both your breasts and Rose’s with Her mind while Her bulge was still pumping inside of you and Rose started almost sobbing with joy and horniness.

After that point, you find yourself deposited on the floor, lying on your side, an unfamiliar sensation bubbling in your groin - that you realize after a while is the Daughter’s red slime slowly leaking out of your pussy - while your eyes slowly come into focus again, gradually zooming in on the sight of Rose, spread out on her stomach, the Daughter of Death beaming in total contentment as She mounts her, the bulge lashing into her from behind. Rose’s mouth is a perfect oval as she screams up at the heavens and at the Daughter’s proudly smiling stone face (Which is really never going to look the same to you now, you think). The shape her soft lips make as they form that expression is _amazing_ , you’ve never seen it from such a good vantage point before, usually it’s you making her make that face.

Her shrieks of pleasure sound like they’re coming to you from underwater. You roll over, flopping onto your tummy, and you just grin at her like a big dope, happy that she’s getting to experience what you just got, soaking yourself in the afterglow. You kind of feel like your brain got filled up with your goddess’s red essence, too.

Rose comes, eventually (not for the first time, you think), going stiff and taut like she’s doing tantric yoga (ooh, now there’s a good idea) and then slumping forward, arms and legs dropping flat, her face grinding into the carpet as the Daughter keeps pumping into her. You scootch up and pet her face and hair, mixing your sweat together and smiling at her as the Daughter finally, finally finishes.  
  
She pulls out of Rose and steps back a bit, Her legs shaking, you look at Her crotch and blink as you only catch a quick little glimpse of the bulge before it disappears behind some kind of membrane or shell that then folds itself into Her groin.

She alights on Her back next to the two of you, stretching out Her arms and snuggling up to you, breathing hard, letting out this really sweet buzz-rumble-purr sort of sound deep in Her chest that reverberates through your body.

You really, really like it. You wrap your arms around Rose and nestle into Her side, thoughts of revelations and destinies far from your thoughts, as you are filled only with contentment and the pleasurable ache between your legs and with love - love for Rose, love for the beautiful night, for this momentous occasion, and love for the Daughter of Death, such love that you don’t know if you will survive feeling it - but if you didn’t, that would be okay.

After all, one day, you will die.

This is inescapable, as simple and expected as the beating of your heart or the functioning of your lungs. It is natural, like the turning of the seasons or the rising and setting of the sun on the horizon. Not something to be feared.

And you think that dying of love would be a pretty good way to go.  
  
You turn your head, peering over the gently rising and falling curves of Rose’s chest, to look at the Daughter of Death’s smiling face, and an observation strikes you.

“Where are Your wings?”’

She raises Her head a little, looking surprised, and then says, “They’re only here if I want them to be. It would be pretty silly if part of the price for godhood was that you couldn’t lay on your back anymore. It would make pailing very difficult!” She cocks Her head. “Though, to be honest, it probably would not be the silliest thing I have seen.”

“...what _would_ be the silliest thing You’ve seen?” Rose croaks from her position as the jelly in your sandwich.

She considers.

It is a pretty weird question to ask a goddess, you think. But you have to admit you’re _super_ curious what the answer would be. Is it even _possible_ for Her to answer? How many eons of memories is She sorting through? Does a goddess even think about things in those terms, does- “I think maybe it’s the time ţh҉e S͜pid͠er convinced the҉ P̨o̸la͏r̸it͠ies that t̕he̸ ͢Dr̛e̢a͏m͡e̵r would like it if he dressed up as a cuttlefish for her hatching day party.”  
  
Rose sits up.  
  
“They were waxing very black then, and apparently she went to a lot of trouble to trick him into it, and he looked _really_ silly, with these goofy little tentacles hanging down around his waist like a skirt. But then it got even sillier, because the S͢p҉ider started laughing at how dumb she had made him look, and then she realized that th͘e̴ ͝Dre͟a͘m҉e̕r was hugging and kissing him all over his dumb nerdy face because she thought he looked so cute. So her plan completely backfired. It was the silliest four-scuttlebuggy pile-up of a black gambit ever.”  
  
She looks at the two of you. Rose is gaping at Her. You are gaping at Her too. You hoist your mouth closed in the presence of your goddess. “The truth is that she is very bad at making plans, to be honest. She understands that a little better now.”

“Rose,” you say, after thinking it and then realizing you probably ought to say it out loud, “I feel like we should be writing this down?”

Rose jumps into action, eyes wide, suddenly looking panicked, scrabbling around for pockets that she definitely does not have because she is butt naked, then ejecting a bunch of stuff from her sylladex looking for a pad of paper or something. You try to hold back your laughter. “Rose, it was just a suggestion! I mean, kind of-”

“This is the single most important religious event that has ever happened in the history of the world,” Rose shoots back, not looking at you, “on par with and _possibly_ exceeding the original theophany and the dictation of the Twelve,” a book falls into her hand - that is definitely a library book, she shouldn’t be writing on that, but she wrenches it open - and then the Daughter takes her by the wrist.  
  
“Rose,” She says, smiling. “It’s okay. There will be time for revisions. All the Time in the world. After all, I’m made of it. I can spare a little for my priestesses.”  
  
“But - but, the scope of what You’re telling us, the significance of it, it - it has to be recorded, it has to be _chronicled_ ,”

You come up behind her and put your arms around her, shooshing her gently. “Rose! It’s okay. The Daughter of Death literally just told us that it’s okay.”  
  
“But…” she takes a deep breath. “The - the Polarities. The Architect and the Opposing Force - they’re the same being? Truly? You’re settling _three thousand years_ of theological debate - there - there have been _wars_ fought over whether the two are separate-but-equal or actually just two sides of a larger whole, I can’t just let that pass me by,”  
  
“And you won’t,” She says, pulling Rose closer to take her by the hands, fixing her with Her gaze, and Rose falls silent, transfixed as you know she is by those majestic, unearthly eyes, “you can’t, because you are a Seer, and the need to know and understand and then convey that understanding to others is who you are, who you always are, in all worlds. That’s your power, to **Know** . We are going to need that power.”  
  
“For what?” Rose whispers.

“For the future,” She says, with terrible weight, “for the metamorphosis. Only by understanding us, and through us understanding you, can this world survive being destroyed.”  
  
“Destroyed?!” you burst out. Rose has gone stiff as a board again. “Is - is the world coming to an end?”  
  
“Of course,” She says, simply. “Everything must be destroyed, always, if the world is to change and grow and evolve. All of us are in the process of being destroyed, every moment of our lives, and to resist that destruction is to be alive and dead at the same time, the way I was once.”  
  
You’re trembling. Rose has stopped breathing, she is absolutely stock still.

“The way … You were,” Rose whispers, like you are standing at a grave.  
  
You are sitting in a room with Death, so in a way, you guess you are.

“Yes,” She says, calm and restful like a body in repose. “I was trapped, once. I believed that I could only ever be one version of myself, the worst version, across all timelines. That I was simply a machine whose purpose was to do the will of the timeline - I had a machine’s body, so it made sense to me then.”

“ _And in that exoskeleton of steel_ ,” Rose quotes, awestruck, and you remember those passages of the _Climb_ , “ _I set off on my journey, still in the shadow of the tyrant, both dead and alive, and therefore neither, and my prison walls were my own carapace. I thought that I had climbed, because I could feel once again after so long without feeling - but all I could feel was hollow, and when I was not hollow, I was angry. In truth, I was still in the dark. I had not climbed at all.”_

She’s looking at Rose, and Her smile is approving, but for the first time since She appeared, She looks a little bit tired, a little bit sad.

“It’s all true?” you say, your own voice almost as hushed as Rose’s. “It all really happened to You?”

“Yes,” She says. “But now I am here, with you, and your world is beautiful, and we are all _alive_ .”  
  
You want to cry. You think you understand why Rose always thought the Climb was so beautiful, now.  
  
“I’m glad that Rose, at least, took me seriously. It definitely _seemed_ like the Gravekeeper was listening when I told _him_ all of this… but, I guess it has been twenty-three hundred sweeps for you. That is a pretty long time. And, silly me - how old are you two?”  
  
“Ah - twenty-two,”  
  
“Yeah, me too, give or take a few months…”

“And how old is the oldest person you know?”  
  
You glance at one another. “Well, um, before he died, it was my grandpa, he was almost a hundred years old…”

“Wow! That’s not very much. You are all basically like brown and yellowbloods. I’d forgotten about that. I think I was subconsciously assuming that there would be some highbloods around to remember! You see, this is why we need your help. We have to comprehend these things, or we can’t do our job properly.”  
  
Rose is too busy trying to figure out what She just said to ask the obvious question, so you do it. “What _is_ Your job?”  
  
“To remake the world,” She says, with the weight of a prophecy.

“We are going to resurrect ouŗ ̷ki̵nd͝ here, on this world, bring̶ ͘ơu͟r̵ ch͘i̸ldren ̷t̵o͜ ̧i̛t̛ to live alongside you. And when we are done, the world will have changed. The way it was before will no longer exist. It will have been destroyed, to make way for the new. That is the essence of Time - destruction, entropy, to render existence down into its component parts, so that Space can create it anew.  
  
And you,” She says, “you and the other two, you will help us destroy it, and help us understand what to create in the process.”

You’re frightened. You can’t deny that. But you’re also a little bit excited, and it’s the Daughter of Death, your goddess, your divinity, who you love with all your heart, and so you know that no harm will come of it.  
  
“I’m especially going to need you to introduce me to Dave,” She’s saying. You guess maybe-apocalyptic prophecies are just kind of normal for Her? “He is bound to Time just like I am, so I will definitely need his help.”  
  
“...Dave is going to take some convincing,” Rose says, slowly. “He … can be stubborn.”  
  
“You’ll figure it out,” She says, with utter certainty. “That is your destiny. Plotting the correct course.”  
  
Rose doesn’t blink. She just sets her jaw, and nods.  
  
“...what is my destiny?” you ask, quietly.  
  
She turns Her eyes to you. “To **Change** things,” She says, “to break rules. To alter destiny’s course. And in the midst of it, you will stand tall, like a pillar of permafrost, immovable, reliable, always there. And when the change is complete, when what was has burned away, you will rise up, and give birth to new life from the ashes.”  
  
Your mouth is dry. You can’t speak. And even if you could, what would there be to say? You know, again, in the deepest core of who you are, that it’s all true.  
  
She asks a question, and you’re so busy processing what was just said to you that you don’t absorb it at first. But then it filters into your brain that what She said was “Did I do a good job of celebrating this holy day?”  
  
Rose looks kind of scandalized. You stare in amazement for a moment and then break into a giant grin. “I’m _pretty_ sure this was literally the greatest love host that’s ever been celebrated in all of history.”  
  
She looks incredibly pleased, and you stop for a moment to boggle at the fact that a goddess apparently cares what you thought of Her performance in bed. (Or, on the altar. And on the floor.)  
  
“Will we see you next year?” Rose asks.

The Daughter, for the first time, actually looks surprised. “Next _year_ ?” She _stares_ . “There’s no _way_ I can wait that long, you’re both _way_ too sexy. You should just tell me when is good for you! We _have_ to make this a thing.”  
  
You really hope that the Daughter of Death thinks that you and Rose look cute when you are gaping at Her in astonishment, because you’re doing that a lot today.

 

* * *

 

She kisses you both goodbye. You are both wrapped awkwardly in towels, She has re-donned Her ethereal, godly clothing (which She doesn’t seem super worried about getting Her red cum-fluid all over. Maybe the celestial realm has really good laundry?). Her wings are back. You want to draw them. No, you want _Dave_ to draw them. He’d do it better. She also gives you a Pesterchum handle, which is kind of weird, but, hey, you’ll take it, and Pesterchum has been very important in your life historically. (Also, the chumhandle is really edgy but also kind of suits Her.)

“I still have so many questions…” Rose says, softly, gazing at Her with wonder in her face.

“I know!” She chirps. “You’re never going to stop having questions, until the day you die. Th̸e D͢ra̧g҉on sure hasn’t, and she’s a Seer too.”  
  
“The - the _Dragon_ is-”

“I’ll answer as many of them as I can, soon. For now, I have to meet someone in a few minutes, and I can’t keep him waiting!”  
  
“...can I ask a question, before You go?”  
  
“Of course, Jade!”  
  
“What is that thing You keep doing with Your voice??” This has been _really bugging you_.

She blinks. “What thing?”  
  
“The - that thing, where what you say gets all distorted and weird?”  
  
“...when did it happen?” She asks, intrigued, brow furrowed, looking so, _so_ much like Rose, even if She has a different face and yellow eyes and horns.  
  
“Um, it happened a few times. When you were talking about what you’re going to do in this world, with your ‘children’… but mostly it happens when you speak the names of any of the other gods.”  
  
“....ohhhhh.” She smiles, widely, pleasant surprise on Her face, like She just found a twenty on the sidewalk. “I understand.  
  
The universe no longer decides our fate - that is our responsibility, now - but it does make some decisions. And sometimes, it acts to protect us, since we created it. There are some things you probably shouldn’t know yet, for everyone’s sakes. Don’t worry! You’ll find out eventually.”  
  
This answers … not very much, really, but you know it would be rude to say so, and you also know that Rose is about to say so no matter how rude it would be, so you’re very glad that She takes control of the conversation again. “Before I go! There are some things I need you to do.” You both stand up straighter. “First off, no more calling me a Handmaid. I am not handmaid of anything or to anyone. The Handmaid was a slave, and there will be no more slaves. Second, really - could you please stop calling me t͠h͝e̛ ҉Po͘l̡a͘ritie̷s’s moirail? It’s really not right … we’re still kind of trying to figure out how we feel about one another. If we ever decide on a specific quadrant, we’ll definitely let you know.”

You decide not to tell the Daughter of Death how hard executing Her commands to rewrite millennia-old scripture is going to be, seeing as how you two are only mid-ranking priestesses in a marginal (if fast-growing) sub-cult, and you aren’t even on the same _continent_ as the Concordance, let alone have any position on it.

Somehow, it doesn’t bother you all that much, either, to tell the truth. You can’t not try, and it feels like you’re about to enter a time when anything is possible.

“And, I did sort of come here to do t̨h̨e ̛H̸untr͝e̕şs҉ a favor - so, remember what I said before! You two would be very good as hearts. Honestly, I think you already _are_ red for each other, so I wouldn’t even have said anything, but she likes to have her ships all neat and tidy. And Rose - you should go seek out t͏he ҉Moth͡er͜.”  
  
Rose looks baffled. “...the Mother? I am _Your_ priestess. Unless You’re ordering me to convert, which, well, it would be an unprecedented move-”  
  
“No, no! I’m just telling you to go find her. Or, rather, t̷he̡ ͏Hưn̕t̢re̸s͜s is, but I think it would be a good idea too. I think you’ll like her.”  
  
Rose swallows, her cheeks slowly filling with color as the implications of this sink in. “I-if You think it’d be best,” She clutches her red-stained towel a little closer to herself.

“I do!” She smiles, happily, and your heart gives another little twinge of devotion. She leans in to kiss you both on the cheeks. Rose accepts it, flushing, but on a sudden impulse you turn your head so that She meets your lips directly with Hers. She grins that terrible, amazing grin and places both hands on the sides of your head, and kisses you so long and hard and deep and hot that for a moment your knees go weak and you almost fall down.  
  
And then She winks at you, and shoots you the finger guns, and makes a little ‘ _nkt-nkt’_ noise at you with Her tongue, and then She is gone, with a tinkling of musical notes and a grinding of heavenly clockwork, and a swirl of ash on the floor of your shrine.

Gingerly, supporting one another, you pick your way over to a wall, and sit down next to each other on the carpet. Rose’s head droops onto your shoulder. You sit there like that for a while, exhausted, physically and spiritually, and gaze up at the stars.  
  
“So, um…” you say, at last.  
  
“Mhm?” Rose murmurs.  
  
“...do you want to maybe go to the park with me, tomorrow? There’s a good place to get coffee I know, and we can sit and watch Bec chase pigeons and squirrels and stuff… and … maybe get lunch afterwards?”  
  
Rose is staring at you. Your face is very hot. “...if you want, I mean.” you finish. You sound _really_ lame.  
  
The silence gets _really loud_ . “I mean,” you start to say, desperate to fill it up with something, “it would be fun, and, well, we kind of did just get a divine commandment or I guess at least like a strong suggestion from the goddess of love to become girlfriends? At least, I think that’s what happened? Right before She tried to set you up with the Mother Goddess, I mean - but, what I mean is, the point is that we really like each other? At least, I think so! You’re basically my best friend, and we spend tons of time together, and also we have really, really hot sex all the time, and only some of it is for ritual reasons, and… um…”  
  
You peter out. You are very embarrassed. You sort of wish the Daughter of Death would destroy the world right now so you won’t feel like this anymore.

“That … sounds lovely,” Rose says. “As long as after we spend a pleasant day out at the park with your monstrous dog, we can go home and have some of the aforementioned extremely hot sex.”

“Bec is not a monster!” You burst out.

Then you stop. “So - so you do want to be, I mean, like She said-”

Rose smiles a tired and really beautiful smile at you. “I think that, as our beloved godhead said, it would, in truth, only be a formalization of an already-existing state of affairs.”

You laugh and hug her. Her body is very soft and sexy under the towel.

It is also super sticky. “We should go take a shower.” you say.  
  
“Death and _fate_ , I thought you’d never say it.”

You hold hands as you make your way to the bathroom, and it feels very, very right.

 

 

_And it pains me to say, I was wrong_

_love is not a symptom of time,_

_time is just a symptom of love._

**Author's Note:**

> Well, here it is. I started working on this shortly after the prompts were opened to the public, wrote maybe two-thirds of it, and then just completely lost the momentum and ended up in a really bad mental health place where I was just not capable of writing anything.
> 
> Almost a year to the day after last year's swap ended, it's done. I'm doing much better now, making a lot of progress in my life and with my health, and when preparations for this year's swap started, I knew I had to sign up - last year's was very important to me, for a couple of reasons, so I said to myself that I'd finish this fic before this year's prompts went out. I hope the prompter enjoys it - it took me a long time to write, but it was a _lot_ of fun to write and I'm pretty proud of it - I actually have ideas for two more fics set in this timeline, one where Rose brings Dave into the faith and one that chronicles what happens when Rose follows Aradia and Nepeta's advice to go looking for Kanaya.
> 
> Thank you to Iny and @compositecreature for help with the worldbuilding, Iny, @snugglepup, Dia, and @kurifurinkan for beta-reading. Also, thank you to @roselalonde for the jaderoseradia playlist that fueled the vast majority of the writing of this, and in particular for introducing me to the song whose lyrics bookend this fic - I cannot hear anything else as Aradia's theme anymore. And, thank you to the Polyswap mods for running a fantastic event.


End file.
